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Health Law

Food Poison Blog

Surveillance and analysis on food poison news and outbreaks.
By Marler Clark

Post Frequency: 17.6/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 12:57:03

Chorizo Recalled in Texas

Posted on May 17, 2009
The Texas Department of State Health Services announced a recall of dried Chorizo manufactured by Houston meat company, Los Corrales, covering product produced since January 2009. The reason? Los Corrales has not been documenting that the Chorizo was properly cooked...

Giving New Meaning to the Term "Kill Step"

Posted on May 15, 2009
Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting, as well as disturbing, article on the continuing dangers of ConAgra frozen pot pies. Specifically, despite the 2007 outbreak and all the serious illnesses it caused, the safety of the pot pies still depend on the customer cooking them correctly...

New York City's Health Commissioner Takes Over At CDC

Posted on May 15, 2009
We now know who will be running the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention. The President has announced his pick to lead CDC is New York City's Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden. Dr. Rich Besser, who has been acting director since the new Administration took office, will return to his role as head of the CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response...

Getting Word of Recalls to Consumers

Posted on May 15, 2009
A tip of the meat-thermometer to Herb Weisbaum for an excellent column on how stores could to a better job of notifying customers about recalled products. Mr. Weisbaum points out that stores are the last line of defense in our food safety system...

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Peanuts and Pistachios & The New Team In Charge Of FDA

Posted on May 14, 2009
Few would have predicted that when history is written on the first term of the Obama Administration that peanuts and pistachios would play such prominent roles. Those unlikely products, however, will be used by historians to demonstrate the bad old ways versus the new U...

Allergies to the rescue!

Posted on May 14, 2009
A person working in an AT&T building in San Jose, California, decided to clean out an office refrigerator that had apparently been unplugged for some time on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the combination of smells from rotten food and disinfectant was overpowering, and another building employee called 911 after smelling the fumes...

Sprouts: 235 victims . . . and counting???

Posted on May 14, 2009
A new study finds that only 60 percent of Americans search their homes for recalled foods when a recall happens. Reuters carried an interesting article on the study recently, and it got me thinking . . . about the current sprouts situation, as usual...

A Connection Between a Strain of E. coli and Colon Cancer?

Posted on May 13, 2009
A team of scientists at the University of Edinburgh are reporting on the possibility of a connection between a strain of E. coli and colon cancer. The implicated bacteria is enteropathogenic E. coli or EPEC. EPEC is a group of bacteria that cause gastroenteritis in humans, but lacks the shiga-toxins associated with shiga toxin producing E...

State-by-State Food Safety Regulation?

Posted on May 12, 2009
As reported by the Wall Street Journal's Jane Zhang, states frustrated by the slow pace of national food safety reform have begun to take matters into their own hands. Georgia was hit hard by the recent outbreak of Salmonella in peanut butter and peanut products; as the leading producer of peanuts in the US, the 25% drop in demand has hurt farmers and businesses all the way up the production chain...

More from Mr. Orwig and Caudill Seed

Posted on May 12, 2009
I know you're dying for more. I posed a question to Caudill Seed yesterday about why they haven't recalled their product. Jim Prevor, the Perishable Pundit, had the same question apparently. Pundit: FDA says Caudill made the decision to voluntarily withdraw from the market all the alfalfa seeds bearing six digit lot numbers that start with 032...

Interview with Lyle Orwig, Spokesman for Caudill Seed

Posted on May 12, 2009
Good Lord, where do I start? Well, to begin with, thank you to Mr. Orwig (picture left), Caudill Seed, and Jim Prevor, aka "the Perishable Pundit" (the latter thank you being entirely without my tongue in my cheek--I really do enjoy Jim's weekly emails) for a wealth of extremely valuable information...

Update on Sprouts Salmonella Outbreak: 235 confirmed illnesses

Posted on May 12, 2009
The CDC has updated its numbers with respect to the alfalfa sprouts outbreak. See the full report here, which gives a good summary of the epidemiological evidence that establishes that Caudill Seed was the source of this outbreak. My homework assignment for Lyle Orwig is to read this report before doing anymore interviews...

Bob's Food City Recalls E. coli O157:H7 Contaminated Ground Beef

Posted on May 12, 2009
The summer is fast approaching and that means--you guessed it--E. coli-contaminated meat recalls! Bob's Food City, a Hot Springs, Ark., retailer is recalling approximately 375 pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U...

States Tell the Feds: If You Don't Fix It, We Will

Posted on May 12, 2009
State legislators around the US, fed up with the perceived slow response of the federal government to enact stronger food safety laws, have begun sending a clear message to Washington: if you won't protect our citizens from increasing foodborne illness outbreaks, then we will...

3 Sickened With Crytposporidium Near Philadelphia

Posted on May 12, 2009
Officals in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania have anounced that 3 individuals have been confirmed with cryptosporidium. While public swimming pools are common source of cryptosporidium outbreaks, there is reportedly no evidence of such a connection here...

Sprout advice from a Sprouter

Posted on May 11, 2009
I recently received this comment to a recent post that I called ...: "You need to buy your seeds organically grown. This will almost ensure that there will be a lesser chance of bacterial problems. Before you begin sprouting you should rinse your seeds very well with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide...

Recalls Found to be Even Less Effective Than Expected

Posted on May 11, 2009
There has for a long time been valid criticism of food recalls, both with regard to how agencies like the FDA implement them, and whether recalls really work to prevent foodborne illness. In my view, most recalls are best described as closing the barn-doors after the horses have escaped...

Sprout Outbreak Update: this may get messy

Posted on May 11, 2009
Here is a copy of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC addressing the recent sprout outbreak. We have been reporting on this for weeks now (maybe months), since cases were first report in Nebraska in February. Please take a look at this report; it provides a good summary of the anatomy of an outbreak, especially when sprouts are the vehicle...

Legal Lessons From the Country Cottage E. coli O111 Outbreak

Posted on May 11, 2009
In April, The Oklahoma State Health Department (OHD) published its final report on a massive outbreak of E. coli 0111 linked to the Country Cottage restaurant in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. E. coli O111, one of the family of E. coli bacteria, is classified as an STEC, a shiga toxin producing escherichia coli...

Heather Whybrew's E. coli O157:H7 Illness

Posted on May 11, 2009
Andrew Martin of the New York Times wrote a nice article this morning on the safety of our food supply. We represent all three individuals profiled in his article: Heather Whybrew, Carl Ours, and Mary Tardiff. All suffered devastating illnesses in separate outbreaks and from different pathogens...

A Question for Caudill Seed

Posted on May 11, 2009
I'm doing my best to find any reference to a recall of the seeds implicated by the FDA and CDC in the recent Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak, which is now responsible for at least 228 illnesses in 13 states. I can't find any action by Caudill Seed taken to actually recall the product...

Towns in Texas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin Reacting to Fears of E. coli in Public Water

Posted on May 11, 2009
Towns in Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin are taking steps to prevent illness in residnents using public water after positive tests for E. coli. Officials in Hollis, Oklahoma were distributing bottled water after positive tests in the public water system...

European Union Has Food Safety Problems Too?

Posted on May 10, 2009
I am heading to London Today for a series of lectures on food safety (with a side trip to Paris) and just in time the EU put out its report on foodborne diseases for 2007. Full report - Here. In total, 5,609 food-borne outbreaks were reported by MSs in 2007 that is a slight decrease of 2...

"Gross-Out" Food Stories - Cases We Do Not Take, But They Sure Catch Your Eye

Posted on May 09, 2009
The Internet has a bit of everything - many things you just would rather not know about when it comes to your food. * French Fried Condom - It was a sad day for a 7-year-old girl in Switzerland. She got more than a little prize in her McDonald's Happy Meal—she allegedly found a condom in her French fries...

Marler Clark Clients Pitch Food Safety in Washington D.C.

Posted on May 08, 2009
Last June, Brian Grubbs, of Colorado, suffered a Salmonella Saintpaul infection after consuming contaminated jalapeno peppers. His illness was one of more than 1,200 in a nationwide outbreak. The Grubbs purchased the peppers at their local WalMart...

Bacteria on the menu?

Posted on May 08, 2009
Michelle Bridgestock, a student at Abilene's Holland Medical High School, recently released the results of a medical research project she conducted as part of an independent study course. Ms. Bridgestock tested menus at 12 local Abilene restaurants for the presence of bacteria...

Sprouts: Honestly, Does it get any Riskier???

Posted on May 08, 2009
There can only be two reasons why anybody in the country would be eating alfalfa sprouts right now: one, they have not seen any of the hundreds of news reports, blog posts, or FDA/CDC reports on the several large outbreaks or recalls that have happened already in 2009; or two, they just don't care about the risk...

FDA Gets 19 Percent Increase In Obama's First Budget

Posted on May 07, 2009
With nearly equal increases on both the food and drug side of its business, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is getting a 19 percent increase in its budget in 2010. That at least is President Obama's recommendation to Congress, which controls the federal purse strings...

Sarsaparilla, Spearmint, and Sassafras Siezed as Suspect

Posted on May 07, 2009
It looks like a potential foodborne illness disaster just waiting happen was averted by swift action from our federal government. The FDA announced today that due to extensive rodent and insect infestation throughout a warehouse for the American Mercantile Corporation of Memphis, Tennessee, a warrant was issued and executed by the US Marshalls, resulting in the seizure of more than $1...

WHO Sees Possibility of Contracting H1N1 Flu Through Food Exposure

Posted on May 07, 2009
Striking a more cautious chord than previous health agencies, the World Health Organizaiton (WHO) announced today that meat from pigs infected with H1N1 flu (the so-called "Swine Flu") should not be used for human consumption. The WHO also stated that it was preparing guidelines designed for workers handling the pigs...

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